A few posts back I outlined the view of faith I held for many years and later struggled with, a view that understood faith primarily in terms of belief – where belief was primarily understood in terms of thinking some statement or doctrine to be true, and where truth was primarily understood in terms of literal factuality. Having already teased out that view to some extent, while also exploring a bit of its history and outlining several alternative approaches to faith I later came to discover as well, in this post I’d like to revisit the relationship between faith and belief once more. The reason for doing so is because, just as I came to discover that there were varying approaches to the concept of faith, I also came to discover that there are varying approaches to the concept of belief. Perhaps most importantly, however, I came to discover that the concepts of faith and belief are somewhat synonymous after all. Having once struggled with the idea, my hope is that what follows will help explain why I still continue to see “faith as belief” today.

Although up until now I have primarily been using the term “belief” in the propositional sense described above, one of the major revelations I had along my journey was coming to discover that not only are there other approaches to the concept of belief, but that the concept of belief that I had struggled with for so long was in fact a very recent concept. Indeed, just as I discovered that the view of faith I had held for most of my life was a relatively modern concept that would have been foreign to most Christians throughout history, so too I discovered that the same was the case with my view of belief. Although the Bible no doubt uses the term “belief” on numerous occasions, it wasn’t until later that I discovered that the meaning I had imbued that term with was far from its original meaning. Furthermore, I also learned that the numerous occasions it does occur are actually the result of a translation from the Greek of the very same root word that is typically translated as “faith” (i.e. different variants of the same word in the original Greek ended up being translated as different words in English). Not to get too technical for a blog post, but for those curious, I learned that the Greek word that is typically translated as “believe” in the New Testament is pisteuo or pisteuein, which turns out to be the verbal form of the noun pistis that is typically translated as “faith” (that is, because we lack a verb cognate for the word “faith” in English, many translators opt for the word “belief” as the nearest substitute).

This was monumental for me in that, having already by that time discovered the more ancient meanings of what it meant to have “faith,” I now came to see that the same meanings could be applied to what it meant to have “belief” (indeed in the Bible they are simply different variants of the same word!). Whereas I had always previously seen faith and belief as somewhat synonymous, I had always interpreted the latter in a way that emphasized thinking and then fed that interpretation back into the meaning of the former (so that faith also then emphasized thinking). In short, what I eventually came to realize was that I actually had it backwards. Instead of adopting a more modern understanding of belief (e.g. to think) and then translating that backward into my understanding of faith, I came to adopt a more ancient understanding faith (e.g. to trust) and then translated that forward into my understanding of belief. So, in a somewhat ironic twist, I ended up coming back to the view of “faith as belief” that I started with, only where both terms were now seen in a more ancient, rather than modern, light. That said, and although I’ve spent a good amount of time thus far in my blog hashing out some of the pre-modern understandings of the word “faith,” since I haven’t yet really done the same when it comes to the word “belief,” I’d like to spend a little time doing so in the remainder of this post. Partly for the sake of completeness, but partly because you may be surprised (like I was) to discover some of what I learned.

To start, and as you may have already guessed by now, it turns out that the pre-modern meaning of the word “belief” is itself actually very different from what the word has often come to mean today. Whether looking far back to its ancient Latin roots or to its more recent pre-modern usage in old English, I came to learn that the concept of belief had a much different emphasis prior to the Enlightenment than it does today. Turning first to its more ancient Latin heritage, the word “belief” turns out to ultimately draw its roots from the the Latin word credo, which is itself the root word for the English word “creed” (and which also happens to be the first word in both the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds). Indeed, credo is commonly translated into English as “I believe,” which is why most English translations of the ancient creeds use the phrase “I believe” so often (e.g. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty… I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ… etc.). This was nothing new for me insofar as it goes, however the key difference I came to discover is in how that phrase was historically understood in its ancient context. Today, many people seem to understand the meaning of the phrase “I believe” as primarily having to do with giving one’s mental assent to something – i.e. to think a certain way. However, it turns out that the Latin roots of the word combine, not to mean “I give my mental assent to” but rather “I give my heart to,” or “I commit my loyalty to,” etc. – i.e. to live a certain way. 

As such, to recite the phrase “I believe” at the beginning of the creeds wasn’t meant to indicate to what one commits their thoughts, but rather to whom one commits their lives: “I give my heart to God,” and who is that? Who is the God to whom I commit myself? The rest of the creed tells me: “God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible, etc.” That is, although the creeds do offer a (sometimes quite elaborate) set of statements, the original point of reciting the creeds wasn’t to indicate your agreement with the truth of the statements themselves, but rather to indicate your commitment to the God the statements describe. Moreover, I learned that the creeds didn’t simply serve as a means whereby one commits themselves to God, but also as a means whereby one comes to experience relationship with God. Expressed theologically, their purpose wasn’t propositional but sacramental. Indeed, it is through these somewhat outdated and clunky words that we can continue to stumble into the presence and mystery of God even today. Like an old set of cracked and rusty signposts pointing into a mist, the point isn’t to analyze and affirm the integrity of the signposts, but rather to journey into the mist towards which the signposts point.

So much for Greek translations and Latin roots, you may say, but surely the word “belief” in English still means the same thing today as it always has, right? Well, it turns out that even the English usage of the term has shifted quite dramatically over the last few hundred years. As I learned when researching the topic while writing my book, prior to the 17th century or so, the referent of the word “belief” wasn’t primarily a set of statements or propositions, but rather a person. I not only found this fascinating in its own right, but also because I had already learned that the same was essentially the case for the Greek words used in the Bible as well (out of the 600+ times various Greek words in the pistis family appear in the Bible, I discovered that only about 4 percent of those occurrences are followed by a proposition). Indeed, in many ways similar to the Latin word credo also mentioned above, it turns out that the English word “believe” originally meant “to hold dear” or “to love,” just as its German relative belieben still does today. As I mention in my book, although many examples can be found in English literature going back to at least the 13th century, even as late as Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well (e.g. early 17th century), when the king says to Bertram, “Believe not thy disdain,” this is not to be understood as exhorting the hearer not to believe (in our sense) that he has disdain, but rather not to cherish, foster, or hold dear the disdain that he obviously has.

I know I’ve only been able to touch the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, but hopefully you’re starting to see somewhat of a trend by now at least. To put it as succinctly as I can, I came to see that “belief,” for virtually all of its history, had almost nothing to do with thinking something and almost everything to do with loving something. I don’t know about you, but that revelation totally rocked my world (and right-side-up to boot!). In short, becoming familiar with the history of the word “belief” itself (whether in biblical Greek, ancient Latin, or pre-modern English) showed me that the term didn’t always mean what it often means today (in fact it has meant something much different for much longer). Rather than meaning to affirm the truth of a statement, it instead meant to love, cherish, or commit oneself to a person. Indeed, it in many ways shared the same meanings as the word “faith” once did – meanings such as trust, loyalty, allegiance, etc. Even more interestingly, I also learned that the word “believe” and the word “belove” were related as well – that what we believe is what we belove. Thus, and to bring us back full-circle, I came to see that to have faith really is to believe, but that to believe is to belove. I came to see that faith, at its very heart, is about beloving God. 

All that said, and having now more or less recounted much of my theological journey insofar as it relates to the way I have come to see the nature of faith, in the next few posts I’d like to explore the nature of belief a little bit further. Having up to this point been almost exclusively focused on its nature within the narrow context of what it means to have faith (and how I’ve come to see both in more of an ancient/non-propositional light), in what follows I’d like to explore how my understanding of the more common modern/propositional view has shifted to a considerable extent as well. I aim to do so because although I think the proper emphasis of “belief” lies elsewhere when one is talking about matters of “faith,” I also believe that such a propositional understanding (although perhaps overemphasized) can play a role as well. Indeed, in many ways my hope is that recounting my explorations and struggles with this propositional notion of belief will not only help highlight some of the many interesting insights I came to discern about it along the way, but that it will also help to shed even more light onto some of the troubling implications I came to experience as a result of it – implications which may themselves provide an even greater degree of contrast with (and perhaps some degree of rationale for) the way I’ve come to see things today.

Until then, thanks again for reading and – as always – stay curious, seek truth, and love well.

Cheers,